Methods for vehicle speed detection using video have many important transportation applications. For applications such as traffic speed enforcement, accurate speed detection is necessary. One method for determining a vehicle's speed is to capture two time-sequenced images of that vehicle, track a specific feature on that vehicle such as, for example, a location of the vehicle's license plate, and then calculate the vehicle's speed from trigonometric relationships. For accurate speed determination, the precise height above the road surface of the feature being tracked needs to be known in advance, unless a stereo imaging system is used, wherein pairs of images from two different positions are captured. Unfortunately, vehicle features are not placed at fixed heights across all vehicle makes and models. As such, speeds calculated by analyzing non-stereo images taken of moving vehicles tend to lack the accuracy required for law enforcement.
Accordingly, what is needed in this art are sophisticated systems and methods for quickly analyzing images of moving vehicles to determine the vehicle's speed in a practical and economically feasible manner.